Download Me, Amadeus! Sony Set to Open a Classical iTunes

You bet it matters to those of us who prefer Mozart to Lady Gaga. I rarely say this…but YAHOO Sony!

Genre-specific totally matters because Jazz and Classical listeners have different needs than pop listeners. For pop, a site can get away with basically singer/group and name of song. Damn you if you'd like to know who the side musicians or songwriters were. It's frustrating to download classical that (a) is the equivalent of listening to a.m. radio (vs. a CD) and (b) has no information such as who the soloists are, what the lyrics are to the art song you are listening to and, for jazz, when and where a recording was made, who the sidemen were on each track… all things usually found easily in liner notes on CDs or albums.

So in addition to upgrading the sound quality *significantly* any classical/jazz site will need to – as JJM said, keep the integrity of the original recording (order, which matters in these genres more often than not – and IMO, matters in rock but no one considers that these days), keep the quality of the original recording and also provide much more 'liner' note information that listeners are used to and prefer having.

Standard CD quality is rather minimal for much music, but certainly for most clasiical music. 44kHz, 16bit is just not enough to provide a truly stunning listening experience, but it is adequate. Compressed AAC or MP3 is nice for background listening, but not for active listening. So, providing lossless 44kHz/16bit is nice. The CD format was a compromise to start with and hardly anybody these days knows how much richer recordings can sound. There is a reason analog LP's are making a slight comeback these days.

It would be truly stunning if some company had the audacity to provide 48kHz/20bit hardware and digital distribution. Just start at the high end and let it slowly conquer the world.

If you're going to promote your company, why not use your real name? The commenter here is James Glicker, managing director of Passionato.

This is a wonderful idea for two reasons – 1) It will help older consumers learn the wonders of iPods, and 2) The best-known lossless format is Ogg, and that's open-source. So it's a big win for FOSS! :)

The public demand for “high-fidelity” audio has been waning (or faster) for years. Why would people want to spend additional money for a lossless or high bit-rate format when they aren't buying equipment that can take advantage of these formats? With nothing more than years of interested observation to stand on, I have seen how generations find their musical listening identities when young and tend to stick with the same likes/dislikes as they age. Each generation's music seems to lose itself with the following generation. Of course, there are exceptions, but how many boomers love Frank Sinatra like their parents may have, and how many children of boomers have bought multiple Frank or classical recordings (or even one)? All genres of music and recordings are more accessible than ever allowing essentially any recording to be previewed before purchase. This access likely diminishes music sales since many albums/cds contain filler tunes which were previously only purchased because of their inclusion with other, more popular tunes. I believe the data available for music purchases is way too short (1940s+) to come to some determination that the reason people don't buy classical & jazz online is because of lower sound quality. Most of my friends that used to spend meaningful money on audio equipment aren't even aware of the lower quality sound afforded by lossy codecs, and when I point it out to them they don't seem to care. All one needs to do is take a look at the implosion of middle market audio sales and it's clear that the desire to hear music with the greatest of sonic fidelity is at this point in time a thing of the past.